Website Goes Through Extraordinary Measures For Shake Shack 'Con' Job

For Manhattan’s desk jockeys—especially those in media—sometimes, the only thing as important as filling your post quota and getting out of the office to head home is the crucial decision of where you’re going to have lunch that day. Alas, some young women found a way to combine the three pursuits, and earn a little cash on the side.

The lines that snake around famed Manhattan burger franchise Shake Shack‘s outposts have become notorious for being ever-present, no matter which location one frequents. As is the smell of delicious hamburgers being deliciously assembled. So goes the struggle of working near a Shake Shack (full disclosure: the Observer has one on the same block, terribly):

Do you even chance it? Do you send subordinates to do your waiting for you? Or do you work at a company so capable of deriving infinitely complex financial instruments designed to filch zillions from the American economy that you have your own (mythical) Shake Shack grill, thus abstaining this concern from your universe entirely?

Or do you come up with a quasi-con designed to entertain you on your lunch hour, get others to pay for your lunch, and pick up pageviews?

1. Get someone to stand in line for you.
2. Take people’s orders from the back of the line, with a fee attached.
3. Put a plant in line so you can get other people to go along with the plan, which isn’t all that convincing and which is fairly sketchy on face-value.
4. Take the money, place the orders, collect the burgers.
5. Enjoy the cash you paid for your lunch with that you just made, and then some.

On the one hand, it’s time consuming, requires an entire operation squad, and the payoff can’t be that great. On the other hand, if you’ve got five people sitting around at lunch of a Friday near Madison Square Park, and you’ve got nothing pressing…it’s actually not the worst idea.